Alex Jordan sits down with “aspiring comics creator” Von Allen, who is in the midst of trying to find a publisher for his just completed graphic novel, “The Road to God Knows:”
You’ve been out promoting the book at cons even before it was finished, which is a little unusual. Why go that road, no pun intended?
This is the bookstore guy in me. That and the pragmatist. Most books fail. By fail I mean that they sell less than 1000 copies in a typical year. By most I mean around 90%+ of what’s published in a given year, at least in English. First books by unknown authors will generally fair extremely poorly in both the book trade and the Direct Market. So, one of the things I’ve struggled with in putting the book together was trying to avoid having it fall completely on it’s face when it finally hits store shelves. Going out and trying to build some awareness for it before it was available was (and is) a good thing to do. How will people know to order a book if they don’t know it exists until it ships? And for an unknown author it’s even trickier. This ain’t “Frank Miller’s road to god knows…,” after all.
Conventions, particularly arts-oriented conventions like the Small Press Expo and the Alternative Press Expo, were one way to connect with a possible audience. Both SPX and APE in particular tend to have the audience that would read a book like mine so exhibiting at these was part of the plan fairly early on. Being able to talk with attendees and give out samples of my work was something I was pretty keen on – primarily to try and build some word of mouth interest in “road.”
Unfortunately, I’m one of those folks Von Allen handed a sample of the book out to … only for me to never get back to him about it. Sorry about that Von.
October 5th, 2007 at 9:55 am
The Road to God Knows is a lovely quiet story; Von sent me a sample copy as well.
I have published books in the very niche market of libraries serving teens, and in that market, selling 1,000 copies is an amazing feat; I think my latest book sold about 800 books in its first year (2006). And that was with about six glowing reviews in library review journals.
I do hope the book can find a publisher. The story deserves readers who want something different from costumed superheroes; the book should appeal to teens and to women especially - Von’s main character is endearingly real looking.
October 7th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Hey Chris,
First, I wanted to say thanks for the mention and no worries about not getting back to me. Life can be very busy and I’m not surprised that I got lost in the “noise” of everything else. Especially since the galley I gave you was of the very early and very rough variety. If memory serves, you received a Cerlox-bound version at SPX 2006. Pure black and white with no grey washes whatsoever. A LOT has changed since that version was produced and, I believe, the book is stronger for that.
Again, life can be busy for everyone. The problem that occurs, however, is when almost all copies wind up not getting any advance reviews. If everything becomes buried, it’s a huge issue in MY life. In my case, I’ve now distributed approximately 70 galleys (ranging between $15-$20 plus mailing charges in some cases). The Cerlox-bound one I gave you, rough and all, was $20 (newer versions are perfect bound but the cost is not significantly cheaper). The math speaks for itself. The marketing expense is warranted when buzz starts to happen. But in my case, collectively, it’s been almost mostly silence. Not good.
So, what was I expecting? Well, the best example I can give is in a fascinating article on the American Bookseller’s Association’s website. They did a marketing case study on Sara Gruen’s “Water for Elephants” and the importance of word of mouth. The relevant bit is this:
“It all began in the winter of 2005, when Craig Popelars, director of marketing at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, first read Water for Elephants. As he turned the book’s final page, Popelars had that this-could-be-really-big feeling…so he reached out to the independent bookselling community.
Said Popelars, “This book felt like an opportunity to put a copy in everybody’s hands – you couldn’t specify just one audience for it.” And, he added, “Like Life of Pi or Peace Like a River or Plainsong, it felt like something bigger. It also has that great double-surprise ending…when you feel good at the end of a book, you want to look around and share it.”
Although it was the busy holiday season, several booksellers took the time to read the book and called Popelars with positive feedback. And at the ABA Winter Institute, held January 26-27, 2006, a large number of the 400 bookseller-attendees introduced themselves to author Sara Gruen and shared their enthusiasm for the book.
The excitement-levels were rising…and the book’s June 2 publication date was still five months away.
THE BUZZ BUILDS
As winter turned to spring, the Water for Elephants groundswell intensified. “I felt like I had a staff of 500 people working for me, and the independent booksellers took the job out of my hands,” Popelars explained, noting that he received numerous requests for additional galleys because bookselling staff were getting tired of sharing their dog-eared, much-read copies. Ultimately, Algonquin did three printings of the galley, for a total of 3,500 copies.” (http://www.bookweb.org/files/open/pdf/BScasestudy.pdf)
Now, since this is the ABA, they are focusing specifically on independent booktrade retailers here. And, of course, there’s no way in hell I can print 3500 galleys of my book. Very different scales here, at least in terms of budget. I believe, however, that despite this there’s a lot that still applies. Word of mouth is so very important. I’ve been trying to accomplish the same thing with Direct Market retailers, media folks like yourself, librarians, and the others on top of it. Awareness HAS to be built before the book is solicited for orders. Or, the book will disappear. It’s the old Oscar Wilde line, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”
I thanked Kat privately for her very kind words. An advance review went up at Sequential Tart, too, if you’d like to take a peek. It’s a fantastic review. I should add that out of all the galleys I’ve sent out, this is the only advance review that’s actually gone up on a public website (so a 1.43% response rate) It’s at http://sequentialtart.com/reports.php?ID=5455&issue=2007-09-03. This is the kind of thing I need more of.
So what happens next? Odds are I’m going to turn the story into a full webcomic and try my luck that way. There are still a few things to work out and we’ll see how that goes.
Von